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Call them Werewolves

The blogosphere has shown some ability to change the terms and
terminology of the terror-war debate in the U.S. It’s time for a bit
of meme-hacking. Let’s see if we can displace terms like “insurgent”
or “Saddam loyalist” with one that conveys the true depth of evil we
are facing. I have a candidate to propose.

A little more than sixty years ago, the U.S. and its allies went to
war another psychopathic, mass-murdering dictator — Adolf
Hitler. In 1944, as the Third Reich was collapsing, the SS organized
a Nazi resistance to commit assassinations, sabotage and guerrilla
warfare behind Allied lines. The parallels in organization and
tactics with Baathist-holdout activity in Iraq are very
close.

It is a matter of record from Saddam Hussein’s autobiography that
he admired Hitler’s ruthless efficiency and sought to emulate it. We
should revive for these remnant Baathist thugs the term, redolent of
willful evil and darkness, that the Nazi resistance fighters used for
themselves.

It is hard to believe a man of your standing can credibly try to compare Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler.

As any History undergrad student can explain to you, there is _no_ comparison.

Hitler gathered power by exploiting a nationalistic feeling after WWI, Hussein gathered power by murder (which in a way, makes him worst than Hitler, but definitily not similar).

Also, the subtleties of war have radically changed since WWI/WWII — war was _not_ subtle, it is now. It is a game of inteligent men, being fought by idiots. In a time where strategt should prevail, we conquer on the back of technology, kill on the back of civility, mask hate with hipocrisy.

Please, stop this nonsense — I support a war against Iraq (or any other country for that matter) if fought for the right reasons (even if these are purely economical, but clearly stated), but this blog, and your comments about the war are truly an insult to any half-decent, half-inteligent being that has any knowledge of history.

Nuni writes, “It is hard to believe a man of your standing can credibly try to compare Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler. As any History undergrad student can explain to you, there is _no_ comparison.”

Besides all the many other important differences, I note the following:

* Hitler had a small mustache. Saddam Hussein’s mustache was big and bushy.

* Hitler had thin hair. Saddam’s hair was thick.

* Hitler lived in a country that started with a “G”. Saddam lived in a country that started with an “I”.

* “Hitler” has two syllables. “Hussein” has two completely different syllables.

In fact, Hitler and Saddam had almost nothing in common, except that they were both murderous, genocidal, fascist, antisemitic dictators who ruled monstrous regimes until the US kicked their sorry asses.

What with the Tolkein/Zanth crowd, I’d worry, slightly, about leftist concern for the endangered werewolves. I’m not clear how much of the current dispute is baathists, or even the higher-level baathists who were the torturers, and how much is a red dawn style general impulse towards nationalism, a kill the invading foreign devils meme. There are a lot of people who hate bush but would fight against canadian, french, etc. invasion to affect regime change.
But overall, memehacking is fun and you are a master of it.

Name ‘em donkeys, after the carts. Plus, notoriously, it’s hard to get donkeys to pass over even a small bridge. (Hence the old phrase “pons assenorum” (sp?) referring to Pythagoreum Theorems that many students just couldn’t grasp.)